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German politics. Flinten-Uschi defying the laws of gravity


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Oh well, I spent the day cutting down the election manifestos of each party to just the most poignant passages for some of the most important topics for a lesson with some of my classes...

I have to say, I feel the urge to condemn the CDU as un-electible solely for how shitty they formatted their manifesto and how they drag every tiny little point out for 70 pages font size 8 formatted in justification. It's not even entertainingly evil like the AfD, it's just a whole lot of nothing with a hint of a suggestion every two pages.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Mmh... one day before the election strikes and I'm not seeing any discussions here? Well, I'm anxious about how much of a shit show the coalition building will turn out to be, also the latest polls are disturbing with the CDU having a steep rise and Die Linke now in danger of failing the 5% hurdle... well, while trying to sort my mind out I leafed through the previous pages and noticed that mostly German-speaking users have been posting here anyway. This combined with just reading a piece about how nobody seems to give a shit abroad about the German elections I somewhat feel motivated to give a rundown for those interested about who is actually running.

Here's the current polls: https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/germany/

Starting at the top right now is the SPD: The social democratic party, the oldest party in Germany. Born as a response to the industrial revolution they used to be a marxist party fighting for worker's rights, social security and democratic reforms for the German Empire. Those days are long past and the party has moved over the last century more and more and more to the center, now competing directly with the CDU for the exact same votes. Their last chancellor now works for Gazprom and Rosneft and pretends to be an instagram influencer after leaving a legacy of weakening up employee rights to drastically reduce joblessness through precarious jobs that can only exist through subsidizing these workers to allow them to survive. Somehow his party hasn't managed to clearly distance itself from him, only barely acknowledging the need for reforms. Their current chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz runs on a platform of being just like Merkel, just bald, avoiding any distinct promises aside stability.

Next up, the CDU/CSU: The CDU is the christian democratic party with the CSU being their Bavarian regional counterpart with which they have an arrangement of essentially acting like one party, but with the CSU having total control over Bavaria with the CDU not competing there and in return the CSU only existing there. It may surprise you, given Angela Merkel's reputation as a sensible actor, that the CDU is her party. Yeah, turns out her reputation is mostly a result of her pragmatism and occasional hijacking of her opponents' positions to pull their teeth before elections. Otherwise she has been clearly responsible for shielding one of the most corrupt clown shows we have seen in recent history because they were loyal stooges to her, and of course stepping on the breaks in a broad variety of necessary legislation. So... doesn't look so far like we get pragmatism under a chancellor Laschet. This supposedly conservative party in its current iteration seems split between dangerously incompetent career politicians who are only in it for the money and even more dangerous ideologues of the so-called "Werteunion" that thinks they have to compete with the AfD for fringe right-wing positions and somehow Laschet seems to think he needs to find common ground between these factions. So basically their platform is a whole lot of nothing combined with more kleptocracy and quite possibly more drowning refugees and getting blackmailed by dictators.

Bündnis 90/Die Grünen: Ah yes, the Greens. If the horrified screeching of various lobby groups, conservative media outlets and almost all the other parties is anything to go by, then they are doing at least something right. Interestingly their program is more geared towards turning Germany into an export nation of green tech, shortening supply routes through thorough carbon taxing to reduce carbon emissions (with the nice side effect of being less at the mercy of China) and various subsidies to the technologies we actually need while scrapping subsidies to 19th century technologies we still somehow insist producing. Unfortunately suck at dealing with all the shit flung at them. And I'm not even talking about all the various non-scandals exploding in the media and the ridiculous flagellating apologies, but also the refusal to go on the offense and not point out the corruption of the other parties when they keep putting derisive comments against the Greens on their posters and infuriatingly talk down on their candidate Baerbock during the debates. So basically the Greens play nice and just smile in order to avoid getting accused of being moralizing, allowing the other parties to dominate the narration and portraying them as moralizing hypocrites, and then wonder why all the voters think them moralizing hypocrites. And that's not even going into the subject of how they will totally take away the lesson from this that they need to water down their positions and move further to the center than they already are, what with their one president of a federal state being indistinguishable from a CDU candidate.

FDP: The liberal party. Meaning economic liberal party, with some members I met proudly calling themselves neoliberal, much to my confusion. Their ideology is "I don't want to pay taxes" and somehow succeed in making a sizeable number of voters think that they would also not have to pay any taxes if they were in charge. Want completely unleashed capitalism (literally one of their slogans) and prefer trading emission certificates to actually doing something against climate change. Somehow their party leader's much mocked statement that 'someone will someday invent something against it' in regards to the imminent mass extinction event somehow made its way onto their election posters, they have that little self-awareness. Ah yes, also Christian Lindner. Given how omnipresent he is (also constantly foregrounded by the media for reasons you can probably guess), makes you think that the rest of the party are only hired actors. In fact, given how vastly out of proportion their size to their significant big business donors is... Well, maybe the only saving grace is that they actually have a somewhat bold plan for the EU to get a constitution. Likely only to make its lobbyism problem worse though.

AfD: The resident far-right populist party. Started out being against the Euro, then noticed that being against refugees gets them more attention (and a massive influx from neonazi groups), imploded a couple of times and had their leadership replaced with more extreme nutjobs that then in return got ousted by even more extreme nutjobs, and right now decided that it's a valid position to not only be against the EU, foreigners and now vaccinations, but also pro climate change. Because catastrophic droughts, heatwaves and floodings are somehow good now. I found their program entertainingly evil, but it fills me with despair that they still get more than 10% of votes. Also does it surprise anyone that they are fueled by Millions of Euros in illegal campaign donations funneled through anonymous swiss bank accounts that totally don't belong to Putin? Anyone? At least thanks to the emergence of a corona denyer party that instantly had only 5000 members less than the AfD, I'm looking forward to them slicing into the AfD protest voter base at least a little bit.

Die Linke: The last actual socialist party. Created from the merging of the remnants of the reformer wing of the old GDR state party (the higher ranks either fled to Argentinia or joined the CDU) and various western euro-commies, it's... never living down that label despite having nothing to do whatsoever with the SED anymore. They have clearly socialist policies, redistributing wealth, re-nationalizing the train network and housing, but only reluctantly attaching the 'ecological' label to infrastructure stuff to make it sound somewhat greener and have an incredulous foreign policy stance. Sure, it's absolutely valid to not like the US, but ditching NATO and not making use of the EU as an instrument for change because of it seems absurdly short-sighted, especially in regards to essentially giving Putin free reign over eastern Europe for reasons.

 

I hope this helps a bit for anyone trying to make sense of what's going on here.

 

So that's the situation. I voted already weeks ago, so I'm out of the race. Still... from my perspective, even though I am horribly annoyed by them most of the time, I personally see the Greens as the only party I can imagine voting for given what the alternatives are and how they are at least somewhat moderately advocating change. At least they are also for a reduction of the parliament and stricter and more transparent campaign donation laws.
Still, with the race being as open as it is, I am deeply concerned about any government involvement of the CDU or the FDP. If they get allowed at the table in any capacity we are fucked for the next four years and I don't want to imagine how this would further fuel resentment among the voters. For fucks' sake, anyone I'm trying to talk about it in real life, all reveal themselves to either not vote at all or vote for fringe parties due to their disillusionment about all the parties being the same.
So for that reason I'm still somewhat reluctantly hoping that the SPD/Greens/Linke coalition that everyone is loosing their mind about is actually becoming a thing. Again, given the alternatives...

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Red-red-Green is not happening. One party is simply not operating in an observable reality wrt foreign policy.

 

I could spend again ranting for 10 minutes how on earth people think of either Scholz or Laschet as chancellor material. It's beyond me, and beyond the pale quite frankly speaking. As for Baerbock, the way the Greens tanked the campaign, and her not being able to boss the polls against Scholz and Laschet is enough for me to scream for her head after the election is done.

Btw. am I the only one who is gonna do in person voting tomorrow?

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2 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Red-red-Green is not happening. One party is simply not operating in an observable reality wrt foreign policy.

My thinking is that maybe in the coalition talks you can get them to focus solely on domestic policy and let the others handle foreign policy. I think members of Die Linke itself are a bit more torn on that point than their election manifesto invokes, so there is at least a chance.

The other alternative would be to get the FDP into the boat and given the theatrics Lindner did four years ago in regards to the Greens, I don't see that happening. The other alternative would be Jamaika, which would be horrific in any way imaginable and leave the Greens utterly declawed to do anything (and probably will then get the blame for all the shit the CDU pulls, look at how they still get attacked for the Schroeder years where they abandoned all their positions for a nuclear-power phase-out that Merkel immediately rolled back and would have kept infinitely rolled back if not for Fukushima).

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2 minutes ago, Toth said:

My thinking is that maybe in the coalition talks you can get them to focus solely on domestic policy and let the others handle foreign policy. I think members of Die Linke itself are a bit more torn on that point than their election manifesto invokes, so there is at least a chance.

Torn is pushing it.  The group willing to tell Putin to get fucked instead of being apologists for him, and thus are kinda ok with NATO is negligible.

If I were to make a guess, we end up with the same parties in power. SPD and CDU. Question remains, who will be the senior partner there. I still won't vote for the SPD and Scholz (fuck off Olaf), they don't deserve my vote.

Next likely scenario is probably Jamaica, and then we reach the the traffic lights.

If all of those fail, we might end up seing RRG.

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1 minute ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

If I were to make a guess, we end up with the same parties in power. SPD and CDU. Question remains, who will be the senior partner there. I still won't vote for the SPD and Scholz (fuck off Olaf), they don't deserve my vote.

Mmh, but as it is now, it doesn't look like they have enough votes for a Grand Coalition, meaning either the Greens or the FDP have to jump in as the third partner. In that case, it'll probably be the FDP.

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1 minute ago, Toth said:

Mmh, but as it is now, it doesn't look like they have enough votes for a Grand Coalition, meaning either the Greens or the FDP have to jump in as the third partner. In that case, it'll probably be the FDP.

We will know Sunday night. I think they will have the votes at the end of the day.

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4 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Btw. am I the only one who is gonna do in person voting tomorrow?

I will go and take my 18 years old daughter with me. Was not easy to convince her that voting for one of those clowns is better than abstaining. In the end, we don't really vote for persons anyway. 

Even though I am canvassing for the Greens here in Bavaria, I will most likely vote for the SPD and my local green candidate. Everything to get Jamaica off the table. Two liberal and two conservative parties in government is too much to stomach. They will throw the small people under the bus. The SPD program will somewhat hurt my wallet but sacrifices have to be made.

 

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The dice and my vote have been cast.

Now I don't want here anything about it for the next eight and a half hours.

11 hours ago, kiko said:

Even though I am canvassing for the Greens here in Bavaria, I will most likely vote for the SPD and my local green candidate.

See @Toth that's why I think CDU/CSU and the SPD will have the votes to proceed. 40% or so undecided, and then the calculations start to kick in. Which of those two clowns do I rather want as a chancellor, how does my vote influence the overall outcome.

Thus I think quite a few Greens will vote for the SPD to prevent Laschet, I can see quite a few FDP voters move to the CDU to prevent their RRG boogeyman. Which has the bigger effect? I'd think that Scholz will benefit more from it. God, I loathe those two clowns. Only person on top of a ticket I'd like to punch in the face even harder is Lindner.

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Even my corporate bigwig neighbor can't stand Lindner anymore. Which is fun for me. As a non Bavarian he should have a hard time to vote CSU. I have no idea what choice he has.

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Oddly enough, when I looked at the polls of my constituency, I saw all three SPD, CDU and Greens are roughly 20% with the SPD slightly in the lead. Four years ago I also wondered about voting SPD because I didn't think the Greens would suddenly be just 4% behind the winner, but in the end they did, so... well, I don't think tactical voting is necessary for me, at least not here. And in regards to the secondary votes in general the race is so close that I'd rather go all in despite the threat of Jamaika. If that threat arises, I at least have other options to voice my disapproval.

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I voted an hour ago.  And for the first time in over thirty years I voted tactically. 

My constituency is fairly firmly CDU (CDU 29, SPD 23, Greens 19). This election the SPD put quite a high profile candidate on the ballot, who got my first vote, as I hope that candidate might push the party in a preferable (to me) direction.

The CDU and SPD will have the majority for another Grosse Koalition anyway. They are polling at 50% take away 6% margin of error and they still have it as the polls have a high number of parties that don't make the 5% hurdle at 8%.

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I didn'T really struggle with my secondary vote. It was always going to be the Greens, lack of remotely palatable alternatives for me.

I struggled with my primary vote. I didn't want to vote for the SPD candidate, as in more overhangs bloating the Bundestag even more (thank you CSU, you useless hillbilly halfwits made sure it grows ever more). But then I remembered, which CDU arsehole is holding that seat. So I reluctantly voted for the SPD candidate. On the other hand, I could've voted for Yogi Bear if he were on the ballot for all the difference it makes. The CDU tosser is also on top on the CDU list. Just like corona, there's just no way to get rid of him.

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25 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

didn't want to vote for the SPD candidate, as in more overhangs bloating the Bundestag even more (thank you CSU, you useless hillbilly halfwits made sure it grows ever more)

Isn't the bloat caused by only one party? So any extra seat gained by the first vote for some other party shouldn't matter. Or is that seperately calculated by states?

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13 minutes ago, kiko said:

Isn't the bloat caused by only one party? So any extra seat gained by the first vote for some other party shouldn't matter. Or is that seperately calculated by states?

It's by state. If the CSU wins all Bavarian constituencies again but only gets 30% of the votes then there have to be a lot of extra seats. First to adjust the Bavarian result and then the other states get extra seats to make sure Bavaria isn't overrepresented.

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2 hours ago, kiko said:

Right. But then it shouldn't matter if some other state gets its own Überhangmandate 

It matters because the Bundestag becomes unwieldy and extremely expensive. Experts recently calculated that every Überhangmandat for the CSU will increase the size of the parliament by another 18 seats to compensate, which will result in ~40 Million Euros in additional costs over the next 4 years.

The Bundestag is already the second largest parliament in the world IIRC (right behind China), adding ever more seats and ever more career politicians isn't a good trend in my opinion. The country needs reforms on pretty much every level, and that includes how we handle the election of our representatives.

 

Anyway, I voted a couple of weeks ago and have been bracing myself for disappointment ever since.

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Definitely following this a lot more than usual.  Interested to see who the next chancellor will be - it's been a long time!  Also interested in seeing how the coalition shakes out, seems like there's a lot of plausible options there.  Finally, interested to see how accurate the polling is.  538 mentioned a concern there's a tendency towards herding:

Quote

The Washington Post’s Lenny Bronner recently found there’s a strong likelihood pollsters are “herding,” which is the tendency for pollsters to produce results that are too similar to one another. Bronner noticed that the shares the SPD and AfD have received in polls are very consistent across pollsters — in fact, in all likelihood too consistent. As we’ve found at FiveThirtyEight, herding can be especially common at the end of the campaign, perhaps because pollsters are afraid of producing outliers that go against the rest of the field. But the unfortunate upshot is that herding often leads pollsters to underestimate some parties’ support and, in turn, leads election forecasters to underestimate the uncertainty in the polls.

 

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